Monday, May 18, 2009

"Quaint aberrations"

"My late students [...] were pleased, I'm sure, to be able to turn the tables on me by giving me instructions in domestic work. They knew much more about sewing than I did, and taught me how to cut out, how to place a pocket, put in sleeves and other mysteries. As for knitting, I could soon turn a heel and was able to make quite elaborate patterns in fleecy white wool. Arthur assured me that he could knit too, but didn't hold with patterns. One evening when I was making a little woolly jacket of basket pattern, I left it to go into the kitchen. On my taking it up again, I found that Arthur had done a row to help me. 'But it's all wrong for the pattern,' I cried. 'No matter,' he said, 'you'll find such quaint aberrations all the time in really artistic work. Look at the Persian rug. And the small wearer won't notice the oddity, you'll see.'So I kept it."

A London Family 1870 - 1900, A Trilogy by M. Vivian Hughes, Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, London, New York, Toronto 1946, p.547